


Lend Me Your Words

by bladeCleaner



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn, Spoilers for Season 2, could be brotp/otp, spoilers up to s2m4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Five: a complicated dynamic of apocalyptic proportions. The conversations they have and how they revolve around each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. going back to the start

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: self-indulgent and long.

When she'd first arrived people speculated she was actually mute; she hardly ever said a thing to anybody and had the best poker face anybody had ever seen. She hardly ever said anything except "yes" or "zombies evaded" or "I see a base up ahead. Approaching quickly." or "Adjusting well, thank you." to Runner 7 or people attempting to make conversation. Her voice was pretty deep and smooth when she spoke, not too loud or quiet. She had short, cropped hair and looked to be Chinese, same as him, though she was infinitely tanner.

One day, though, when he was walking through the barracks for some exercise, he heard her voice. A lot of runners were out that day and so their quarters were practically empty; Five hadn't been put on the mission because she was still new and going through the more intensive weeks of her training. He'd talked to her so much about Alice's sister but they barely talked outside of the field. He spent almost all of his time in the comms booth, so it was hardly a surprise; but still, he'd at least had a conversation with every runner that wasn't through a headset.

When he first saw her in person he hadn't seen her properly to call her attractive; but seeing her cleaned up later, he was forced to admit she was pretty when she smiled. She only did that whenever they all gathered near the play area to listen to Radio Abel together on Friday nights. The establishment of routine was good for re-integrating into reality (or getting back on track? something like that), or so someone had told Janine when she questioned it.

The fact that she had some nice legs didn't hurt either. But he'd only started to pick up and notice after a few months, getting over Alice-

Alice. His third Runner 5.

His first was a dude named Stanley. He hadn't lasted very long; two weeks in and he'd been bitten, and then shot to death by Sara Smith. He hadn't been very talkative, or nice; something to do with getting backstabbed on the road by his girlfriend. His second was an energetic woman named Jessica who had been very enthusiastic about everything, and had previously been a swimmer. She'd lasted the longest; four months. She'd been trapped in a swarm and he'd had to hear her tortured screams, his nails digging into his palms until they drew blood. He'd cried noiselessly.

He'd known Alice for three and a half. She'd been funny and brilliant and bright and she'd made him laugh so much-she was so sharp. She could see through all his cracks. He'd been so in love with her it was almost physically painful. He knew, logically, he'd have to watch her die someday even soon, but-they'd kissed before she left, he wasn't ever going to be ready...

Five-her name was Maria, apparently, from the ID Sara retrieved out of the helicopter's rubble- was so different. She...she looked...blank, most of the time. There were rumors-but then again it was a small settlement still, and like most small towns there'd always be gossip.

But that still twilight evening, the barracks practically empty, the kids playing in the playground and everyone so busy, just her alone and him on his rest break-he'd heard her real voice. She was singing,

" _It's getting late and I_

_Cannot seem to find my way home, tonight,_

_Feels like I am falling down a rabbit hole,_

_Falling for forever, wonderfully wandering alone_ -"

Her voice wasn't phenomenal, but it was sweet and when she sang,

" _May we stay lost on our way home._

_C'mon, c'mon, with everything falling down around me..._

_I'd like to believe in all the possibilities._ "

He got slight chills down his back. She sounded melancholy and nostalgic, the first emotion he'd ever heard from her really come through.

He shook his head and smiled, a little puzzled. So the stoic Runner 5 was a person after all. He went to go find Jack and Eugene.

It was C'mon, by Fun. He had them play it on the radio. He listened to the song over and over, but the way she'd sang it was different than the more upbeat original version. It'd been more desperate-sounding and sadder. Sara liked to say none of their stories were good. Maybe that's why she didn't talk a lot, only sang. He remembered that the widest she'd ever smiled was on that sing-along Ed had started up a few weeks ago. She'd been singing, he'd been singing-it'd been a lovely night. He was watching her then too, not out of much curiosity but sheer boredom and a wandering eye.

After her run to Bert Airfield he'd been trying her best to repay her but aside from the hot showers she'd waved away his jar of Marmite and offers to play video games. It was like she didn't want to be close to anybody. She and 4 got along pretty well, but then again 4 was known for endearing herself to people pretty easily. She and 8 had an unspoken military-comrade thing going on, too. But both seemed more like professional relationships. Most of the time she ate with the runners, kept quiet and spent her leisure time in her bunk or helping out wherever was needed.

All in all, a good, hard worker, but hardly social. Sometimes he'd see her by her windowsill watching people outside, but she would never go out and interact with them. If he didn't know better the reason why she volunteered so much was that it was a valid excuse to talk to people outside of the mic.

He knew that she did, in fact, talk to Jack and Eugene: apparently she'd requested a bunch of songs that he listened to late at night. Sleepsong, by Bastille, Sleeping Sickness and Delaware by City and Colour and Moving On by The Getaway Plan. They were all sad, indie songs; but they'd lulled him to sleep perfectly, with hardly anything but a vague sense of melancholy fighting in his chest.

He'd called her a friend. Though they were hardly friends. She knew so much about him, but he knew so little about her, it was weird. Though at times she had in fact snorted into the mic when he'd said something, then coughed to cover it up. He'd heard her and it'd been heartening, a little; she did think he was funny. Sort of.

What Five didn't know-what made him stay up all night for some runner he barely knew-was that he'd been watching her. Not in an Edward Cullen sort of way, of course, but more like he'd catch glimpses of her that'd make him backtrack.

When she came home that night, cold electrifying her nerves, her legs burning: the first face she saw was Maxine. The calm, steady Maxine's, her tan face stretched with relief. Her knees almost caved and she stumbled into her arms, feeling the strain of her muscles finally give away and she collapsed, her skin memorizing for agony's sake the patterns of dirt. In her headset she could hear Sam rejoicing and cheering; Maxine was slowly lifting her up, saying softly and gently, "I've got you, Five, I've got you."

(What Sam didn't know: that she'd been watching back. Depression and PTSD was something she'd known intimately, almost too intimately: during her training period she'd watched him slowly slump into it, coming to a head in Week 3. She couldn't blame him. The death of her family and friends in front of her-she'd had to put down her best friend with an axe before she turned 18-had turned someone who used to talk all the time and laugh into someone who barely spoke and hardly tried. She'd watched him goof around, trying to stay strong and joke about while hiding his pain; it wasn't so much an infatuation as it was a certain type of jealousy, almost, though she wouldn't have minded trying him on, as Simon once put it to her later. She'd been watching and he seemed-like a fairly normal guy, nerdy and goofy, kind of like her before all this-and she'd been pretty fond of him, eventually. Then she went on her ninth mission. She'd called out his name under her breath, knowing he couldn't hear. There were certain things you went through together that ended up making you friends, and having someone stay up with you was one of them.)

She'd been watching and it hadn't been something she'd been aware of, at first; she started liking whenever he laughed, smiled quietly to herself whenever he praised her. She didn't really know what was going on until she'd been smacked into realization when she realized she wanted to kiss him in the bunk one day, listening to a love song on Radio Abel.

They'd been watching each other. He talked to Janine, Maxine and all the runners more than her, and she mostly talked to Maxine, Four and Eight more; but they had a certain...unspoken agreement. Sometimes they'd catch eyes in the cafeteria and he'd quirk his mouth upward, and then the moment would pass.


	2. late night conversation

They didn't talk about that night, or at all, except once.

It'd been a late night. Later than late; she'd been given long rest breaks after that mission, and so she'd been wandering about. For three nights she couldn't sleep more than half-an-hour without waking up sweating, imagining that the zombies were still behind her. She'd kicked off all her blankets off in her sleep. She groaned, dragged a hand down her face in frustration, threw on a tank top and some shorts and headed outside. Tonight was the third night (dawn? It felt like it was...four, three? Not dawn yet) and she had to admit PTSD was definitely kicking in.

The entire base was completely still. There was a group of people who met pretty late in the night to just kick the football around, who worked on the afternoon rations shift; but even then they'd already gone to sleep. The Midnight Crew, she called them in her head, and wondered how many _Homestuck_ fans were still alive.

The moon was half-full overhead and it cast a dim light on her, directly above the base. It was a warm summer night and the only sound she could hear was her sneakers crunching on the gravel as she weaved her way through the barracks, eventually ending up in front of the graveyard. Her favorite spot was the grass patch near the well in Janine's backyard, but she didn't really want to wake up Janine. The hospital was closed; no runners were out on overnight missions and everyone was in the base, so the late nurses had gone back to their rooms.

She approached the graveyard and saw a figure standing there. Her hand immediately went for the knife she kept in her pocket at all times, but she saw that it wasn't a zom: just another ordinary Abel citizen. She relaxed. Then wondered if she should intrude on someone's private time with a dead friend. She tried, very subtly and quietly, to back away, but sneaking away was nigh impossible: her sneakers were too loud on the grass. The figure whipped around and his voice carried, "Who's there?"

It was Sam.

She exhaled in relief. "It's me. Five."

He visibly relaxed and she decided to come nearer. It was nice to have company on nights like these, anyway; she hoped she wasn't intruding. If he minded, he'd say so.

She walked towards him and the grave he was standing by. She saw that it was Alice Dempsey's and her face sobered. He didn't say anything for a minute and sat down. She did the same.

Finally, he cleared his throat and said, "Couldn't sleep either, hey?"

She shook her head.

"Yeah, perfectly understandable, especially after that long, hard, night run...I know you've been running missions again, but are you...okay?"

She inhaled. "I'm fine."

"You sound just like Maxine."

She looked at him for a moment and breathed out. "Okay, maybe not. But I have to be."

"You know you can always talk to me, right?"

She looked him over for a trace of insincerity or pity, but he was staring at her with unusual focus and intensity, more concerned and intent than sorry. Shocked, she simply smiled and said, "Same here."

It was the most words they'd ever exchanged and she would have left it there, but she remembered his outpouring of confessions back then and felt-obligated to tell him. Her voice was kind of husky when she said, "I-I'm kind of grateful for the apocalypse too, you know."

He looked over at her abruptly, sensing the shift in tone, but didn't say anything.

She trailed off into silence and then said, after a while, "I still think the future's worth fighting for, though."


	3. come back from the dead

She doesn't know if it's love; she doesn't think she can actually feel that, anymore, romantically. But she does, in a way, love him. Abel is Sam Yao to her. Sam Yao is hearing home, now, or the most permanent home she's allowed to get in these hard times.

At night her favorite thing to do was just loiter around on the rooftop of the highest housing building. As the population of Abel grew, she'd had to put an OUT OF BOUNDS sign to prevent couples from making out up there. As much as she loved Jack and Eugene, they could go and french in their own bunk.

Speaking of the radio boyfriends, she'd taken to hanging out with them as well. She was a singer and appreciated the fact that they liked good music; she requested a few songs on their frequency as one of their earliest listeners. When they finally got their recording program to run transmissions at a set time, she was elated. She dropped in an anonymous rofflenet suggestion that they made an insomnia hour for people who couldn't sleep; when they wondered who they'd put in charge of the songs, she jumped at the opportunity. (She also bribed Jack and Eugene with CD's and a promise to keep a lookout for more Harry Potter memorabilia on her next rec run.)

At night she hummed contentedly when she couldn't sleep to the tunes of Bastille and City and Colour. Eugene teased her for being such an indie chick, but she couldn't care less; she loved The Getaway Plan and Transit; so what? Sometimes Jack would slip in a good song or two of his own and winked at her the next morning when he caught her humming it to herself in the breakfast rations line.

Still, she hadn't really talked to any of them. Sure, she talked the talk; where were you when it happened, do you think there's something in the Keeley centre, what she missed about before, etc. etc. Amongst Jack, Eugene, Four and Eight, the only four people she ever really talked to on a daily basis, she was known for having a dry sense of humor. She joined Four sometimes on her Wednesday knitting circle and liked to sit in at the primary school's readings of the latest Harry Potter book on weekday evenings. 

Sometimes, if they were good on fuel, she'd sit at the Rec center watching old classics and Hitchcock, feeling like she was crashing a drive-through movie.

But despite all this heart-warming activity, she hadn’t told them a single thing about her past at all.

She didn't know why she didn't really talk to Sam even in the frivolous way she seemed to have adopted. She liked Jack and Eugene because they had a certain distance from her, in a way. Sam was always there on the field and it almost felt like he should stay there.

\--

When they-they-they-they had been bombed, he-

He thought she was dead. She thought he was dead.

To never hear his voice again, to never share Marmite with him silently in the canteen again, to never smile at him across the room again and see his face light up in response-

To never see her again, to never whisper about Janine to her again, to never see her smile again and her eyes flash whenever he made a joke or hear her sing again-

After they'd made it to Canton, he'd almost cried in Maxine's arms after-

After the explosion he, Maxine, Janine and Runner 7 had retreated into the basement into one of their makeshift bomb shelters. It'd been terrifying and he'd said to Maxine, "Five and Eight are-they're still out there, Max-"

"I know, Sam. I know. They'll-we'll find them later. We need to concentrate on staying alive now."

He nodded shakily.

Then he'd-he'd emerged from-

Abel was full of holes. Almost everything except for the farmhouse and armory had been destroyed.

Then he'd gotten to his emergency comms and heard from New Canton.

"Hey, Abel operator. We've got a runner from your township here."

He took a sharp intake of breath, Max looking at him quizzically.

"What-what's the designation of the runner?"

"Hey, Abel runner, what's your designation?"

The voice that had come back almost chilled him to the bones. It was a rasp, but definitely-

"Runner 5."


	4. graveyard confessions

One of the world's first life lessons in trying to survive the zombie apocalypse: It's a dangerous world out there, especially for the living-and even the undead isn't all you have to worry about.

When Nadia tells her the story of how she and Lem met, she grimaces in recrimination and pain. She doesn't say anything into the headset because she knows Nadia must be furious and bitter and grieving and full of despair. Saying anything would just make it worse.

It's a beautiful story. It reminds her, just a little, of how Jack and Eugene met, almost. Then she realizes with a slow, burning, almost verging-on-a-cliff feeling, that Nadia has sent her out to die. It's Deadlock territory. There's nowhere to go and a murderous operator on the line. She thinks that it's time to go. Better full of bullets than a mouth full of human body parts, she supposes. She just wishes she could have said goodbye to her friends first.

She should have known. There was that little bit of nasty earlier-Nadia calling all the Abel citizens Janine's and the Major's lapdogs. Just because they follow orders doesn't mean they're fucking tin wind-up soldiers, and she had to bite down on her tongue to keep from snarling at her to shove her chip packet up her windpipe.

But then again, that's all Nadia thinks she is: just another grew-up-in-Abel tin soldier, wound-up key rotating around on her back.

When Sam intervenes, she almost gasps with relief, and she tries to head out back. When Sam roars, "Oh, _GROW UP_! Everybody's lost someone! It's just how the world is!" She's a little taken aback and by the intake of breath, so is Nadia. When he tells her the truth about Lem she exhales at the humbleness Nadia shows. Maybe she'll be able to go for a month without another murder attempt (the last one was fucking creepy enough) on the field.

It's really sweet, the way Sam insists protectively that she stay at the township that night. Of course, he ruins the moment by giving her the image that she should sleep with Janine, but it's a sweet gesture nonetheless. She waves goodbye to Archie-she's actually really fond of the New Canton runner -and heads back homeward. Her head isn't spinning. Her heart isn't racing (any more than the usual when running, anyway). Nadia would try and kill her sooner or later when she found out. What's really surprising, though, is the amount of care Sam is showing for her wellbeing. He was really, incredibly furious. She'd never heard him that angry or emotional before. Ever.

This-this thing between her and Sam, she doesn't know if it's something more or if he's just really attached to his runners, but she wants to believe it's something more. She wants to believe that he really, really cares.

\--

"You know what?"

"What?"

"If it wasn't for the apocalypse, we would have never met, let alone talked to each other."

\--

There's a betting pool in Abel about how long it'll take for Sam and Janine to finally get over their belligerent sexual tension. Five's put down five dollars, just to make Eugene laugh and Jack groan about her humor. "You're one to talk," Eugene ribbed, "Who's the one who did zombie stand-up when I had food poisoning?"

"That was because I was in genuine distress!"

"Genuine distress my arse, you sap-"

"Ladies, ladies, no need to fight over me," Three's voice came from behind as he swung an arm around their shoulders.

"Look, Jack, it's your twin," Eugene snickered.

"I'm nowhere near as pompous!"

"Y'all really know how to make a guy feel special," he drawled, and he smiled at Five. "Help me out here, Five?"

She looked at him.

"Cold fish, you are," he pouted.

"Five's a strong, silent type," Jack explained.

"One of these days I'm going to get you to crack a smile, Five," he said confidently.

Eugene elbowed him in the ribs and pointed to a nearby operator. "You'd have better luck asking Sam to help you to do that. Rumor has it that our fan favorite has a soft spot for-"

She coughed. "Oh, hi, Janine!"

The three whirled around quickly and she gave a little laugh.

"Oh, that was low, Five."

"Damn, that was sneaky."

She shrugged.

\--

He'd seen her by the graveyard: after the runners had run themselves ragged over the last few missions, everything was beginning to look...improved, Abel again, their veritable stronghold. One of the unfortunate things was that their graveyard was getting bigger.

He didn't think she'd heard him approach, but she said quietly, "Sam Yao," and he'd jumped a little.

"Um, nice night, five."

He walked up to her until they were standing side by side, looking at the gravestone. He looked at the name: Sara Smith.

He looked over at her. Her expression was unreadable in the dim moonlight, but her chest swelled, as if her heart was too full to contain anything. He worried for a moment that she might cry, but swatted away the thought. Five was stoic and silent as a rock: in a way she reminded him of Janine, a little. Headstrong, steadfast and sharp.

She didn't say a word. He was as ever filled with the manic urge to fill the void with small talk, but it felt-disrespectful, somehow. Gingerly, awkwardly-he placed a hand gently on her shoulder. She looked at him in surprise, her eyes shocked, then turned back to look at the headstone. She slid her hand across his and held it for a moment, then let go quickly.

He wanted to say: Do you miss her? What did she say in those last moments?

No: he wanted to say: We will get through this together.

He didn't know what he wanted to say, but he wanted-to know that she was doing okay. Half the time she had on a blank expression, like she'd been wiped clean of everything she was before-like she was just a shell. Sometimes he caught glimpses of her human side-smiling at Archie's antics and chuckling whenever Janine and him argued. She didn't keep to herself but she was a wallflower most of the time. She liked to sing, that was all he knew.

Here, though, in the middle of the night, screaming nerves under gauze his skin, he felt too alert, too sensitive to everything:

She felt real. More real than he'd ever felt her been. She wasn't saying a word, but he could feel her being really here: standing in front of her comrades' grave, trying to make sense of a death so impactful of her life.

Maybe he'd never truly know who she was. But that was okay, too. Because she was here, with him, and without warning she'd slung an arm around his shoulder and almost too naturally he'd put his head onto hers.

They didn't have to say anything to each other. In the silence, they had understood.


	5. epilogue: dawn

He finds her on the rooftop one morning.

"Mornings like this," he says, then winces because in all the quiet his operator's voice is loud as gunshots, then lowers it to a whisper, barely a breath above audible, "really makes you wonder."

The entire township, bathed in soft pre-dawn pastel blue, the light just beginning to seep through the windows, so beautiful and peaceful. You could hear birds chirping from the forest. For a while now, Abel had looked rundown and blasted with burns, but with the help of the remaining runners, over the last few months it'd been whipped back into shape. They'd never really get back their housing condominiums-oh, how he missed those-but with strong effort from Five morale was at an all time high. She'd made every effort to put back what had been lost. 

Thanks to her, there were countless bicycle racks, benches and even a tequila shack in Abel. His communications desk was as teched up as ever. Janine had remarked on her inclination towards morale-boosting items-approvingly, of course, but added that the armoury did miss its old grit. After she'd been satisfied by Maxine that no more morale boosters were needed ( _really, Five, unless you can build a Wii from scratch the entire township is very, very grateful,_ she'd said with a note of amusement after she'd come back home with a notice board), she'd moved on to weapons. She'd collected barbed wire, even drove back a fire truck from Jamie and a set of guns.

But she still seemed to say nothing at all, stick to herself if not in the company of runners or personnel, barely said a word aside from 'yes' and 'left'. Her stoic mask was impeccable.

And yet here she was, caught off guard on the rooftops of Abel, her eyes looking softer than he'd ever seen them. She'd hugged him when she'd found out he was alive, but said little. He'd seen her face when she'd been told Jack was dead-well, missing in action, but assumed dead. Her face had contorted for a second into something broken, then she'd immediately snapped back. He'd heard her radio later, though. She was sitting by herself, her fingers crossing over the knuckles of her left hand frantically, her expression never changing. She kept on replaying that last clip, the one Sam could only bear to hear a few times before he nearly broke his radio: _'Gene, you better come look-_  then the awful crashing sound, the radio buzzing off. She couldn't stop playing it. He'd almost burst into her room, but he'd passed on by, not at all sure what to say.

Sam really didn't understand her. She was facing the dim light of the rising sun, the rest of her dark, parts of her face lit up with soft baby blue, "I never turn on the lights around this time. I like watching the dawn, the light creeping on the floors, makes you..."

"..wonder," he finishes, a little shocked, "...maybe if we weren't around, all of this could be forever. Every morning."

She breathes out a gentle "yeah.” They don't say anything, standing on the roof, looking over the sun kissed place they call home. It's refreshingly cool. It's so beautiful, and they're alive.


End file.
